Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins — aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony — and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

"An extraordinary case study and tour de force of reporting." Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

"A sweeping yet profoundly intimate story of one family's breathtaking challenges with schizophrenia and humanity's long history of misbegotten efforts to make sense of, and treat, the condition... Your heart will break, your sympathies will swell, and the Galvins will stay with you forever." Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister

"Hidden Valley Road contains everything: scientific intrigue, meticulous reporting, startling revelations, and, most of all, a profound sense of humanity. It is that rare book that can be read again and again." David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon

"Robert Kolker dives into the exceptional story of one family besieged by humanity's most mysterious malady. Kolker writes about the Galvin family with elegance and insight while weaving together the decades long quest to understand the genetics of schizophrenia, somehow creating a story that is as haunting and intriguing as a great gothic novel." Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender

Robert Kolker is the New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls, named one of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books and one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2013. As a journalist, his work has appeared in New York magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O magazine, and Men's Journal. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the 2011 Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.